


(every single one of us) still left in want of mercy

by Roccolinde



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (he doesn't in this fic but THE POINT REMAINS), Character Study, F/M, The Month In Winterfell (and beyond), also Jaime needs to get pegged way more often, canon divergent from mid-8x04, melancholic but hopeful is a genre, smutty smutty character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 21:22:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/pseuds/Roccolinde
Summary: A character study of Jaime and Brienne, through a series of smutty snippets during their time in Winterfell. With bonus canon divergence because I'm pretty sure none of us accept anything post The Bang That Was Promised.





	(every single one of us) still left in want of mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so, *deep breath* I saw [this Tumblr post](https://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/186222505432/sansalayned-he-will-come-i-know-he-will-he) and started thinking about how much more sense the events of the back half of s8 would have made if Bronn had not come with a crossbow, but with a letter from Cersei that Jaime rejects. Nice nod to the books, and it would make way more sense than "I'll go rescue my sister when she might actually win" and "I'm totes happy and shit, but actually NO I NEVER LOVED YOU BRIENNE I AM SO BAD" and "LOL brother, you're here even after I sent someone to murder you, that's true love" and all the other things I blocked out because they never actually happened. And honestly? I use this idea but I do not explore it the way it could be explored, so if that's tickling anybody's fancy PLEASE write it, and make sure I see it! 
> 
> Secondly, many thanks to bethanyactually, who very kindly betaed this. And has also very kindly fallen down this rabbit hole at the same time I did so I can justify it to myself. (To the others who have also done this, and you know who you are, I love you too.)
> 
> Title comes from [_Starlight_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6U63m_4Oxk) by The Wailin' Jennys. A connection that might only make sense to me, but I have not been able to shake this visceral association between this song and Jaime & Brienne.

He regrets bedding her in the aftermath, though he swears she will never know. He regrets it because he has seen her fight a thousand wights, the image burned forever in his mind, and knows this revelation would eviscerate her the way no blade ever could. He regrets it because she loves him, perhaps as much as he loves her, but he does not know how to love without possession, without secrets and scars; he wants to make her his, drag her in front of whatever god he could find and claim her with more than marks on her skin, and she deserves better than that twisted sort of love. He regrets it because he stays the night, and the Brienne of early morning is so without defenses that he has no chance of getting away, even if he wanted to. 

“Good morning,” she says, smiling. “I’m pleased you stayed.”

It’s so simple, so without judgment or calculation, that he smiles.

“So am I,” he says, reaching out to brush the hair from the bruise that still mars her face. “You’re much prettier in the daylight.”

Her mouth drops open and he thinks, for a moment, he has misstepped—he meant to tease her, but perhaps she does not remember the exact words of years before—but then she laughs, truly laughs.

“No light or lack thereof can help your personality,” she retorts, looking pleased with herself. 

“Such discourtesy from a knight!” he gasps in mock affront, and then they are both laughing and he wonders… he wonders if this is what it is like, to love without fear of rebuke. 

He regrets bedding her, but he would have regretted it more if he had not.

*

“You’re magnificent,” he murmurs, and feels her stifle a snort.

They’re in some empty little room and his back is pressed against the wall and he’s nipping at her neck, wondering how he’s gone years with no more than an occasional brush of shoulders as they pass, the shock when she grabs his arm and tells him to fuck loyalty; they’d touched easily, once, when he had no idea what it would mean. Captor and captive, then two prisoners together, but almost never since. Now he can barely stop—his foot hooks around hers at the dining table, and his fingers find any reason to touch her hand, her elbow, and she doesn’t initiate these touches but she doesn’t pull away, and she’s the one that dragged them into this room even though they are supposed to be meeting Lady Sansa, so yes, she’s _magnificent_ and he’s going to keep telling her so. Just as soon as he’s done kissing her. 

*

It’s late when she finds her way to bed, and she sighs when she feels his presence. Contentedly, he thinks, because she is as naked as he is. 

“Didn’t want you to freeze,” he murmurs, half asleep. 

“More like _you _didn’t want to freeze,” she says in reply, her cold hand finding the bare expanse of his skin. He yelps and grumbles and burrows deeper beneath the covers, and they both find slumber.

He’s woken some time later—he’s not sure when, except the fire in the hearth is nearly gone, and beside him Brienne has gone completely stiff. She does not thrash or scream in her dreams, resolute even in this, but there is the softest whimper swallowed in the back of her throat, and he shakes her awake with a firm grip on her shoulder. 

“Jaime,” she whispers, her voice rough with sleep and fear, and then her hands are on him, her leg sliding over his to pull him close, until their bodies are pressed together and he can feel every slightly rattled breath she takes as she loves him. 

*

He strikes her in training and sees her wince, the sword hitting a yet-unhealed wound. There is no room for apology, not here, but that night he is not only gentle, but hesitant. She is a warrior, fierce and unrelenting, but she is a woman too. She has a woman’s heart and a woman’s body, and a woman’s touch as she places his hand against the scars of a bear’s claws; in the firelight it is difficult to see, but he can feel it, the knots where flesh had stitched itself back together, a reminder of her mortality and her strength. 

He kisses her there. She finds his own scars and kisses them back. 

They have both lived, and that is enough. 

*

The army will march south the day after tomorrow and in the sanctity of her (their) chambers they cannot stop talking, breathless words that come between kisses, mutters of troops movements and travel speeds and how bloody stupid it is not to rest longer, ignoring what the army marches towards. The words drive out other thoughts, and soon even words are driven out by the way she chants his name as she dangles on the precipice of pleasure, a keening repetition that he draws out as long as he can bear, and when she falls… when she falls, he is thinking of nothing else at all. 

*

Tyrion convinces him to go drinking, a farewell between brothers, and it is… good. He is happy, and for what feels like the first time in years, he can say so. Which is why it goes to hell moments later—Bronn arrives, the same foul-mouthed arse he always is, carrying a letter addressed to Jaime.

_ I love you._

_ Come at once, I need you._

_ I love you. _

_ Please come. Please._

He knows these words, knows she might even believe them. But he also knows them for what they are, and the few people he cares for enough to make them targets are well beyond Cersei’s reach. He crumples the letter and throws it into the fire beside him, and tells Tyrion that he is going home. 

They do not make love that night or the next; he can feel Cersei’s claws, the cloying sweetness of her feminine scents invading the space that smells of _them_, leather and oils and a musk that reminds him of the pleasure between Brienne’s thighs, and he cannot bear the taint. But he wakes the second night, dawn still indeterminately far away, his heart thudding, Cersei’s pleas still echoing in his head, and reaches for her instead. 

“Jaime,” she murmurs, still half-asleep, that lovely, strong voice that belongs _here_; he tugs at her arm until she rolls atop him, her weight and her warmth shielding him from shadows.

“Brienne,” he replies, sliding into her with ease as they fuck slowly, languidly. They have time. They are safe. 

They are still entwined when sleep reclaims them both.

*

She is ticklish, just behind her right knee, and she makes him swear to never tell another soul. All the secrets shared between them, all the honourable things and dishonourable things, and it is this she begs him to guard most intently. 

“My lady,” he purrs, his hand running up her calf in search of this spot, smirking when she begins to writhe, “whyever would I tell when it disarms you so well? A poor, one-armed man must have some advantages.”

“You’re a beast, Jaime Lannister,” she says between breathless giggles, and does not move away.

*

He learns the shape of her body from between her legs, smooth muscles and a shadowed swell of her breasts and the long length of her neck as she throws her head back. He learns it from behind, the curve of her muscled ass and the pure power in her legs and the scars on her back, and from the front. He learns the breadth of her shoulders. He learns the sounds and tastes and smells of her, all leaving him insatiable for more. He learns her in sex as he had learnt her in battle.

Despite his best efforts, he can never quite seem to learn how truly _blue _her eyes are when she looks at him with love. 

*

Sansa Stark is cruel in her delivery of the news from King’s Landing, though if anyone has earned the right to hate his sister, she is probably top of the list of those who are still living. It hardly seems to matter anyway—_save me_, Cersei had pleaded, but perhaps she has saved herself. He doesn’t want her dead, despite everything, but he doesn’t want her alive either, because alive she is a threat to all he holds dear. 

It’s Brienne who encourages him to retire early that evening, ready to speak if he wishes and to remain silent if he does not. He kisses her bruisingly and she responds in kind. He’s not certain why he is so desperate; he needs it faster, harder, the exhilarating thrill of battle lust. He bites her shoulder and she shoves him down, one hand keeping him pinned while her other tugs at his clothes. She fucks him relentlessly and it is not enough, he needs deeper and deeper, he needs… he _needs_, and then her hand is between them, coating her fingers in their mingled essence, and slips further back, a teasing pressure at his hole that makes him groan and nod assent, and then she is inside him, a stretch and a burn and an unexpectedly blinding pleasure.

“How?” he asks some time later, when he has begun to recover.

She blushes. For all her strength and bluntness, for all they have done together, she is still innocent in so many ways. 

“I never feel safer than when you are inside me, and I thought…” 

“Yes,” he says, reaching out to draw her closer. 

Simply _yes_. 

*

He is hateful. Selfish. He stays in Winterfell while his sister waits for death, does nothing to save the one who shared a womb, the one he had done so many terrible things for. He stares at the fire, willing himself to leave. To ride to King’s Landing, knowing he will be too late, because it is all he deserves. Not happiness, but he can comfort her in her last moments, die in her arms as he always swore he would, and perhaps atone for all he has done in the process. This is how he has always loved, desperately and secretly and ready to rend the world apart, a destructive force. 

“They’ll destroy the city, you know they will,” she says from the bed, and he had not realised she’d waken. “But if we’re to go, we should leave now.”

She’s already climbing from beneath the furs, her hair mussed by sleep but her eyes sharp as she begins to assemble their clothes, and he cannot bear her steadfast certainty. 

“No,” he says, stirring from the fireside. “No, we’ll stay. Come to bed.”

It is hateful. Selfish. He stays in Winterfell, and he mourns but he does not regret it. 

*

The news comes that King’s Landing has burnt, that Cersei is dead, that Daenerys is dead, that somehow despite it all the people have already begun to rebuild. They lie entangled as they often do these days, and he knows that one day soon they will declare this to the world with cloaks and words. Soon, but not quite yet.

"Some nights," he confesses into the darkness, her arms strong around his waist, "I feel I am still back in the Stark camp, with some terrible festering wound, about to die in my own piss and shit. And these last few years have been... a dream. A trick of a fevered mind that I could regain my honour. Be who I ought to have been."

"It takes more courage to live than it does to die," she murmurs back, pressing a kiss to whatever bit of skin is nearest. "And besides, you aren't dying."

“No,” he agrees, “I’m not.”

Perhaps that is enough. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [you have come by way of sorrow (you have come by way of tears)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20289736) by [Roccolinde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/pseuds/Roccolinde)


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